Big Jack

Chapter 7

Eve woke, as usual, to find Roarke up before her, already dressed and settled into the sitting area of the bedroom with coffee, the cat and the morning stock reports on screen.

He was, she saw through one bleary eye, eating what looked like fresh melon and manually keying in codes, figures or state secrets, for all she knew, on a ’link pad.

She gave a grunt as way of good morning and stumbled off to the bathroom.

As she closed the door, she heard Roarke address the cat. “Not at her best before coffee, is she?”

By the time she came out, he’d switched the screen to news, added the audio and was doctoring up a bagel. She nipped it out of his hand, stole his coffee and carried them both to her closet.

“You’re as bad as the cat,” he complained.

“But faster. I’ve got a morning briefing. Did you catch a weather report?”

“Hot.”

“Bitching hot or just regular hot?”

“It’s September in New York, Eve. Guess.”

Resigned, she pulled out whatever looked less likely to plaster itself against her skin after five minutes outside.

“Oh, I’ve a bit of information on the diamonds for you. I did some poking around yesterday.”

“You did?” She glanced around, half expecting him to tell her the shirt didn’t go with the pants, or the jacket didn’t suit the shirt. But it seemed she’d lucked out and grabbed pieces that met his standards. “I didn’t think you’d have time with all that ass-kicking.”

“That did eat up considerable time and effort. But I carved out a little time between bloodbaths. I’ve just put it together for you this morning, while you were getting a little more beauty sleep.”

“Is that a dig?”

“Darling, how is telling you you’re beautiful a dig?”

Her answer was a snort as she strapped on her weapon.

“That jacket looks well on you.”

She eyed him warily as she adjusted her weapon harness under the shoulder. “But?”

“No buts.”

It was tan, though she imagined he’d call it something else. Like pumpernickel. She never understood why people had to assign strange names to colors.

“My lovely urban warrior.”

“Cut it out. What did you get?”

“Precious little, really.” He tapped the disk he’d set on the table. “The insurance company paid out for the quarter of them and the investigator’s fee of five percent on the rest. So it was a heavy loss. Could’ve been considerably worse, but insurance companies tend to take a dim view on multimillion-dollar payouts.”

“It’s their gamble,” she said with a shrug. “Don’t play if you don’t wa

“Indeed. They did a hard press on O’Hara’s daughter, but couldn’t squeeze anything out. Added to that, she was the one to find or help the investigator find what there was to recover, and she was instrumental in nailing Crew for the police.”

“Yeah, I got that far. Tell me what I don’t know.”

“They pushed at the inside man’s family, associates, at his coworkers. Came up empty there, but watched them for years. Any one of them had upped their lifestyle without having, say, won the lottery, they’d have been hauled in. But they could never find Crew’s ex-wife or his son.”

“He had a kid?” And she kicked herself for not going back in and checking the runs after they’d returned home the night before.

“He did, apparently. Though it’s not in Ga

Interest piqued, she walked back to the sitting area. “She went under?”

“She went under, the way it looks, and stayed there.”

He’d gotten another bagel while he spoke, and more coffee. Now he sat again. “I could track her, if you like. It’d take a bit more than a standard, and some time as we’re going back half a century. I wouldn’t mind it. It’s the sort of thing I find entertaining.”

“Why isn’t it in the book?”

“I imagine you’ll ask Samantha just that.”

“Damn right. It’s a thread.” She considered it as she disbursed her equipment in various pockets: communicator, memo book, ’link, restraints. “If you’ve got time, great. I’ll pass it to Feeney. EDD ought to be able to sniff out a woman and a kid. We’ve got better toys for that than they did fifty years ago.”

She thought of the Electronic Detective Division’s captain, her former partner. “I bet it’s the sort of thing that gets him off, too. Peabody’s picking me up.” She checked her wrist unit. “Pretty much now. I’ll tag Feeney, see if he’s got some time.”

She scooped up the disk. “The ex-Mrs. Crew’s data on here?”

“Naturally.” He heard the signal from the gate and, after a quick check, cleared Peabody through. “I’ll walk you down.”

“You going to be in the city today?”

“That’s my plan.” He skimmed a hand over her hair as they started down the steps, then stopped when she turned her head and smiled at him. “What’s that about?”

“Maybe I just think you’re pretty. Or it could be I’m remembering other uses for stairs. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because I know there’s no bony-assed, droid-brained puss face waiting down there to curl his lip at me on my way out.”

“You miss him.”

The sound she made was the vocal equivalent of a sneer. “Please. You must need a pill.”

“You do. You miss the little routine, the dance of it.”

“Oh ick. Now you’ve got this picture in my head of Summerset dancing. It’s horrible. He’s wearing one of those… ” She made brushing motions at her hips.

“Tutus?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“Thanks very much for putting that in my head.”

“Love to share. Know what? You really are pretty.” She stopped at the bottom of the steps, grabbed two handfuls of his hair and jerked his head toward hers for a long, smoldering kiss.

“Well, that put other images entirely in my head,” he managed when she released him.

“Me too. Good for us.” Satisfied, she strode to the door, pulled it open.

Her brow knit when she saw Peabody along with the young EDD ace McNab climbing out of opposite sides of her pea-green police unit. They looked like… She didn’t know what the hell they looked like.

She was used to seeing McNab, Central’s top fashion plate, in something eye-searing and strange, so the shiny chili-pepper pants with their dozen pockets and the electric-blue tank shirt covered with-ha-ha-pictures of chili peppers didn’t give her more than a moment’s pause. Neither did the hip-length vest in hot red, or the blue air boots that climbed up to his knobby knees.

That was just McNab, with his shiny gold hair slicked back in a long, sleek tail, his narrow and oddly attractive face half covered by red sunshades with mirrored blue lenses and a dozen or so silver spikes glinting at his ears.

But her aide-no, partner now, she had to remember that-was a different story. She wore skinpants that stopped abruptly mid-calf and were the color of… mold, Eve decided. The mold that grew on cheese you’d forgotten you stuck in the back of the fridge. She wore some sort of drapey, blousy number of the same color that looked like it had been slept in for a couple of weeks, and a shit-colored jacket that hung to her knees. Rather than the fancy shoes she’d suffered through the day before, she’d opted for some sort of sandal deal that seemed to be made of rope tied into knots by a crazed Youth Scout. There were a lot of chains and pendants and strange-colored stones hanging around her neck and from her ears.

“What are you supposed to be, some upscale street peddler from a Third World country and her pet monkey?”

“This is a nod to my Free-Ager upbringing. And it’s comfortable. All natural fabrics.” Peabody adjusted her sunshades with their tiny round lenses. “Mostly.”

“I think she looks hot,” McNab said, giving Peabody a quick squeeze. “Sort of medieval.”